Leadership Advance Online – Issue XXIII

As Jesus hung on the cross, He died uttering the words, “It is finished ” (John 19:30). From a certain perspective, this statement can be easily challenged. Finished? Really? As a leader, Jesus died betrayed and abandoned by His closest followers, dreams of greatness in ruin with no strategic plan in place for what was to follow. Yet, He says the work He has been sent to do by His Father is complete. After His resurrection, His followers return to Him as a squabbling set of teenagers with no real clue of what is unfolding. Forty days of personal investment and coaching to address their doubts and questions do not seem to help either. Full of youthful zeal, they still expect Jesus to restore Israel and take the throne (Acts 1:6). Yet, to these naïve protégés, Jesus gives the keys of the kingdom. He departs, the Holy Spirit comes, and the disciples are transmuted to Apostles – then deployed into work that shook the very foundations of the Roman Empire with a whole new paradigm of organization. What made these followers of Jesus return after running for their own lives and denying that they even knew Him? What made them committed to His cause to found one of the major world religions? Why were they so good at establishing the kingdom of God and why did they suit the role so well? This paper uses the account of John 6 where Jesus offends his followers and refines his core team, in comparison to contemporary organizational and psychological theory concerning leader and follower style alignment, person-organizational fit (PO-fit), and person-job fit (PJ-fit), to draw out principles for human resource management and leadership development